


Just A Shot Away

by lindenwaverly



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate universe - Vietnam War, I'm really sorry for this, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mild Internalized Homophobia, mostly Guy/Hal with more Guy/Kyle at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:51:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1343131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindenwaverly/pseuds/lindenwaverly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal and Kyle dance together to a Motown record, Guy isn’t sure what, only knows that it starts as a joke – Hal teaching him to waltz, the kid blushing and laughing and joking about how happy that would make his girl – and that now Hal’s pushing it further and further, still laughing and snake hipped as Kyle gets breathless and flustered.</p><p>Guy isn't sure who he's more jealous of.</p><p>(Vietnam War AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Shot Away

**1972**

“I would have gone to Canada,” says Kyle, “but I didn’t have the money. And what am I going to do in Canada for the rest of my life?”

He’s shirtless on the bed, sketching and swatting the flies that crawl across his hips. Guy’s half hypnotised by the heat and half by the way his hands are moving across his stomach, and in the warmth and quiet he thinks maybe he could die here and it wouldn’t be so bad.

**1976**

Carter’s on the TV again, fuzzing slightly, and John’s in his bar with another black eye.

“I have a meeting, Guy.”

“I know.”

“I have a meeting, and I have to turn up with a black eye because two punks got their ass beat by the Panthers and decided to beat up the next black guy they saw.”

“Hey, look. Fatality got any make-up?”

John shifts in the stool and sighs. “Yeah, I guess. I guess maybe the swelling will go down too.”

He pats him on the shoulder and hands him a whiskey.

“Why don’t you join the Panthers, Stewart? Teach punks like that a lesson.”

John waves his hands. “I was on those marches with MLK. Got bit by dogs and sprayed by water cannons and then I went to Nam and got shot to hell. I’m an old man now, Guy. I’ve done my fighting. And I –" He shakes his head, downs his drink. “There’s all these young men, talking about how we need a war with whitey. If I was ten years younger I’d be out there on the streets. But I’ve been to war. I don’t want to go to war ever again.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes.

“Anyway,” says John. “Why don’t you? Join some gay liberation front or something.”

Guy turns away and starts wiping the bar so damn hard the cloth squeaks.

“Guy?”

“I’m not like that. That was just – that was just Nam.”

“I saw Kyle the other day. Kid’s doing well. He’s got his own show.”

“That’s great.”

“If this is about Hal – “

“It’s not about Hal, nothing is to do with Hal anymore, because in case you forgot, Hal Jordan – “ He stops because the blood is burning in his face and he’s shouting and when did he start shouting?

John spreads his hands, slowly lays them on Guy’s shoulders like he’s calming a horse. “Ok, man. Ok.”

**October 1971**

He meets Hal on his first day in Vietnam, coming off the boat. He trips in the water under the weight of his pack and nearly falls face first until someone catches him by the strap and hauls him back up.

“Careful,” says Hal. “Water’s full of shit round here.”

He shakes him off. “Thanks for the tip, but I can use my damn nose.”

“Watch your fucking mouth, newbie,” he says, and stalks away. Guy watches. Airman’s uniform. Figures.

**1976**

He waits outside the gallery for so long deciding whether or not he should go inside that it closes. He still waits outside, watching the gardens darken, the sculptures lose their form and gradually become masses of shadow. There’s one in the corner, a twisted hunk of metal half hidden by a pussy willow, and to anyone else he guesses it would be abstract or conceptual or some shit, but he knows. It’s a helicopter crash.

“Guy?”

There’s Kyle behind him, dressed in a black turtleneck and slacks. There’s another man behind him, probably around the same age, and he’s beautiful – dark skin and gold hair with a shine like candlelight. Guy shifts his weight onto his good leg and tries not to feel so damn old and ugly.

He finds his tongue, clears his throat. “Hey. I, uh, heard you had an exhibition.”

Kyle’s looking at the ground, at the sky, at the twisty metal sculpture behind the tree. “Uh, yeah, it’s just, it’s shut now, I mean I can open it up and take you round if you want – “

“No, no don’t. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Kyle’s hands fly up and ghost just above his chest. “Please, it’s not – “

“We have dinner reservations,” says the man behind him,  though not in a way that seems to bear him any ill will. “Do you want me to cancel?”

“If that’s – “ says Kyle, at the same time as Guy yells “No,” with such force he shocks himself. “I mean, I’ll come back tomorrow. Go enjoy your dinner.”

**November 1971**

Vietnam doesn’t get colder in autumn. Vietnam never fucking changes. He punches some asshole in the face one day and gets assigned cleaning duty on the planes for a month.

“You missed a bit.”

Jordan likes to sit shirtless on the top of his plane and smoke while Guy cleans. Occasionally he writes letters to his girlfriend. Sometimes he looks at the pictures she sends – dirty ones, probably, if Jordan’s reputation is half true. Mostly he just watches him work.

He wants to climb up there and throw the bucket off soapy water in his face just to wash off that hostile expression. He’d throw it on himself, try and cool himself down, but nothing stays cool in this heat and the bucket is already unpleasantly warm. His shirt lies discarded over the wing tips.

“Why don’t you come down here and wash your own damn plane.”

“I would,” he says, and his voice is calm on top but scalding underneath, “but you were a damn idiot and now you have to do it for me. You missed a bit.”

He punches the side of the plane because he has to punch something. Before he can even check to see if he left a dent Jordan’s leapt down and smashed him against the side of the plane, one arm around his neck and the other holding his arms behind his back, pressed up right against him with his mouth by his ear.

“Don’t. Touch. My. Fucking. Plane.”

He kicks out, but Jordan stays firm. A snarl rips it’s way out of his throat and he bites at the arm around his neck, trying to get some breathing space. His hand comes up to cover his mouth and he bites at that too until he hears a sharp hiss. His head twists so he can yell at Jordan but he bites back, catches his lip between his teeth and worries it until he pulls away and Guy can see the sharp smear of his blood across his mouth until he leans in again, bites the hollow of his neck and licks the mark he leaves. He arches up against the side of the plane and Jordan makes an answering sound, a soft, broken-sounding thing, and works his free hand between them. They stay like that, his arms locked behind him and Jordan leaving a trail of kisses and bites along his shoulders and across his neck. Then he shudders and arches against him, and Guy wants to turn around, catch his face as this happens, but then his back is cold and his arms are free and Jordan is walking away.

**1976**

He stands under the shower and thinks about Tora. He thinks about her a lot, but always in small ways – Tora will do this, Tora would like that, or when he sees a dress like one she owned or smells another woman wearing her perfume. He never just sits down and thinks about her. The first few times they broke up – 69, that awful four-week break in 71 – he’d drunk himself into a stupor, scribbled her a hundred letters, sat for hours trying to work out exactly where it had gone round. This time she’d just left – a soft click of the door and a letter from her mother’s place in Norway – and then he’d been on his own and if it hadn’t felt good and had at least felt right.

John came into the bar after his meeting, still in his suit and tie.

“You look good.”

“Huh?”

“Your bruise. You can’t see it.”

John shrugs. “Oh. Thanks. Turns out they didn’t want my building anyway.”

Guy smiles and pours him a whisky.

“You know,” he says after a minute, casually as possible. “I did – I do – love Tora a lot.”

John nods but doesn’t say anything.

“But I thought I needed to be on my own. I thought that something so wrong had happened to me that, that – it just seemed to dumb to think that anyone else could understand.

“It happened to me too,” says John. “I was there too.”

“I know, John, I – “ He spreads his hands. “I’m trying to say thank you.”

“It’s ok.”

“No, really.”

“You know, Kyle was there too.”

“I know, John. I know.”

**December 1971**

They celebrate Christmas with a short, rough fuck behind the sheds in the stinking village they’re colonized. Afterwards, Jordan drops back, exhausted.

“John knows,” he says, just as Guy’s getting his breath back. “He won’t tell, but he knows.”

“Who cares,” says Guy, and he grabs him by the shoulders and kisses him, breathless and sloppy.

The kid is back with John in their bunker. Kyle is nervous and angry and talks too much. He’s dating one of the nurses who likes him because he won’t talk dirty about her to the other men. Hal charms him so easily it’s like he’s not even trying, and Guy watches as he gets all tied up in knots over the stories of his aerial daring-do.

Hal and he dance together to a Motown record, Guy isn’t sure what, only knows that it starts as a joke – Hal teaching him to waltz, the kid blushing and laughing and joking about how happy that would make his girl – and that now Hal’s pushing it further and further, still laughing and snake hipped as Kyle gets breathless and flustered.

He’s pretty. Still got traces of late growth-spurt awkwardness in his limbs. Sketches all day, long fingers moving against the pages, or dozes with his eyelashes black on the top of his cheek. He tries to laugh when Hal carelessly lays a hand on his thigh.

Guy watches them and tries to work out who he’s jealous of.

**1976**

He spies the helicopter statue from the corner of his eye but hurries on past it. He’s focusing so hard on telling himself that it’s perfectly normal to be here that he misses the desk, and the girl behind it has to chase after him and remind him to pay.

The first set of painting are of LA, all hazy beach scenes and pastel toned cityscapes. A woman tying her shoe, staring up at the viewer with huge green eyes. A man sitting on the beach at night done in tones of muted blue except for the brilliant stripe of white through his hair. Ordinary. Strange.

The first thing he notices when he walks into the next room is that the colours are much more vibrant, and then he realises that it’s Vietnam.

There’s their drill sergeant, leaning back in the morning to watch the rising sun. There’s the nurses station, with all the nurses standing around like shop mannequins, their faces half-covered. There’s the jungle at night, the way it seemed to come closer at night and press up against your window.  There’s napalm fire. There’s the helicopters, painted in just a blur of motion.

He remembers the way the blades spun so fast it felt like they were dragging all the air out from around you until you couldn’t breathe and you felt like your lungs were collapsing on the inside, and then he realizes no, he really is just hyperventilating.

He gets out of the room, out of the gallery.

**March 1972**

Kyle’s jittery when they’re out on patrol. He hums, sings, anything to fill the silence once Guy’s stopped talking. He guesses some of them must be pop songs, but mostly they’re random snatches of life back home – a Spanish lullaby, an advertising jingle, the theme to a TV show.

“You’re going to get us killed, kid. The Vietcong will sneak up on us and I won’t be able to focus on on firing because I’ll have “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner” stuck in my head.”

Kyle grins, sheepish and with too many teeth. “Sorry. I just – I don’t like the quiet.”

“Quiet’s good, kid. Quiet means no one’s running at you with guns on repeat.”

But Kyle still can’t seem to handle it, so Guy talks instead. Tells him stories about his life on the team. About Boston and how much he loved it. About the bar and the bunch of regulars who are probably still draped across the stools there now, trying to act nice in front of the little lady. About Tora. He keeps his voice low – because he’s still listening, God knows he isn’t going to die because the kid was a jumpy idiot – but he still talks constantly, and Kyle walks next to him, leaning in close to hear so that occasionally his breath strokes his cheek.

“What are you going to do when you get back?”

He shrugs. “Don’t know. Marry Tora. Keep the bar. I was thinking I might start teaching sport. You know. If you can’t do, teach.”

“And if you can’t teach, teach Phys. Ed.”

He playfully whacks him in the ribs, and Kyle trips backwards and hits a tree, laughing harder with the fall. Laughter, whenever it happens, is hysterical, a wild monkey shrieking in the silence of the forest. He blames the heat. He blames ‘Nam. He blames the soft blush that shows on Kyle’s cheeks whenever they laugh.

They patrol together every day. After a week, Kyle starts talking back – about L.A, his mother, art school. He tries to describe it, struggles, trips over his words.

“II’m no good with words.”

“Hey. Neither am I. At least you’ve got paintings to make up for it.”

“You’re great with it. All that patter you do in the common room. You’re, you know – “

“A ridiculously charming sonofabitch?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Gardner. I was going to say funny.”

Because Hal’s the one that’s charming, Guy thinks grimly.

But Hal hasn’t been charming lately. They fuck on the ground under his plane, necks hooked over each other’s shoulders and fingers digging patterns of bruises into their ribs like a code for them to decipher. Hal bites his skin, his mouth forming words against his neck that Guy can’t understand. Afterwards, they lie there without talking, without touching. It feels like there’s something hanging over his neck.

Guy has nightmares – his dad, again, revenge in the night for refusing to think about him in the day – and he wakes to find Kyle tangling their fingers together. His hair in the moonlight is the blackest thing he’s ever seen.

“You were fighting with yourself,” he murmurs against Guy’s neck.

“Bad dreams.”

Kyle just hums and strokes his back, then crawls into his bed uninvited.

“You’re a soppy sap.”

“My roommate used to do this for me when I got nightmares.”

“Who’s your roommate?”

“Her name’s Jade.”

Guy whistles lowly, and gets a lazy punch on the arm in response.

“You’re quite the ladies’ man, you know that. For a weird, gangly kid.”

“What do you mean?”

“This Donna you talk about at home. Jade. Your nurse.”

“It’s platonic with Jade.”

“Uh huh. And let me guess, you’re always drawing life models.”

“Hey, I’m going to die a penniless, starving artist. It’s got to have its perks.”

Kyle shifts against him again, skin on skin, and looks up at him with small, sleepy eyes the most brilliant shade of green he’s ever seen, and Guy leans in and kisses him, slow and deep. Kyle makes a sound a little bit like a sigh and rolls on top of him, hands tracing patterns in his muscles, drumming pictures in his skin.

“That was nice.”

Guy can’t talk. “Uh huh.”

Kyle presses his mouth into his neck and pulls away. “You’re my best friend?”

“Is this a rejection before I even properly try?”

“No.”

**1976**

He comes back the next day, skates round the Vietnam room and spends some time looking at the paintings Kyle’s done of New York. There’s several paintings of a tall woman with long black hair, always painted in gold or silver so she doesn’t look quite real, and the caption identifies her as Donna Troy, photographer in high demand. There’s a couple of cityscapes, and a series of pictures of a very pretty dark-haired boy sitting on fire escapes. But pride of place is a painting of the boy he was with the day before yesterday, the beautiful blonde one – _Connor,_ according to the label –  in front of a series of colored lights. They remind him of the skinny disco kids he sees falling out of clubs around the time he’s locking up. Hell, Kyle probably is one of those kids now – drunk and alien-beautiful, hair mussed up and mouth falling open.

He focuses back on the painting.

They’re artistic, he guesses. They’re very New York.

He’s planning to leave – obligation fulfilled, and if he can ignore that heaviness in his chest long enough to find a bar then he can forget all about it – when he turns and sees there’s a large group of people gathered around a particular painting in the Vietnam room. He watches, craning his neck to see what it’s of. Then he catches a glimpse and he practically runs.

His face is in shadow. Hal has a hand over his. Even the colours of their hair are muted to anonymity. But it’s them, because that’s the way Hal’s chest looked when he was stretched out and relaxing, that’s the way he flung his limbs like he was trying to make himself bigger, that’s the scar that crosses Guy’s shoulder and the way his elbows point out. He remembers this moment, this easy intimacy, the way they’d collapse across a bed and just doze, hands drifting across the other’s chest to feel for their heartbeat under their skin, just in case. The little change in temperature across his hips when Hal took a deep breath and his skin moved away. He remembers Kyle standing over them sometimes, and sometimes he remembers John sitting in the corner building a tower of cards, and sometimes there was no one else there.

This is him, splattered across the wall in oil paint on canvas, 947 x 547, and for a second he’s sure that all these people around him can tell that he’s one of the men in the painting.

A woman is talking, he realises, standing in front of the painting and explaining it to a group of potential buyers.

“…. Stunning bravery in these pictures, a raw, intimate portrayal of homosexual life in one of the places it is most forbidden…”

“… Sir, sir are you – “

“I’m fine,” he says, and it’s like trying to breath in the spin of the helicopters. As soon as he thinks of helicopters he thinks of the bronze statue outside, and then helicopter blades on fire, black against the bloody horizon.

“Sir – “

“Please,” he says, trying to move backwards, and everyone in the gallery is watching him. He turns to go, and then through a set of double glass doors he sees Kyle walking up. He storms out, grabs him by the arm and pulls him away from the people he’s with – they're his New York subjects, he realises.

“Guy, what the hell, for fuck’s – Guy!” He pushes him off, and he goes spinning into the bronze statue. “What’s going on?”

“Take it down,” he says between gritted teeth.

“What?”

“You know which one. Take. It. Down.”

“What? Guy, no one can tell it’s you, I promise. And it’s nothing to be ashamed of – “

“I’m not going to sit by while you turn me into your poster boy for poor sad gays.”

“And I’m not going to take down my best work just because you’re on some fucking self-loathing kick,” snaps Kyle, and he pushes him back into the helicopter crash.

“It’s nothing to do with “self-loathing”.”

“Then what? Look at you. You’re an angry, wasted mess. You’re stuck in the past.”

“Sorry I find it as hard to forget as you apparently find it as hard to give a shit.”

Kyle punches him.

He stays on the ground, breathing heavily, one hand clutching the heated bronze of the helicopter’s blades.

“You know,” says Kyle, his voice rough and unsteady, “I used to find it hard to sleep. Back then. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and the only thing that would get me back to sleep was counting you. And now I wake up in the middle of the night and I turn to where you all should be to count you, and you’re not there.”

“Count Connor,” he says, and curls his lip at the snap of disgust in his voice.

Kyle closes his eyes. “I could tell you it isn’t like that.”

“It’s been four years. I think you can handle it.”

“Because you appear to be handling so well.” He sighs, smacks his head. “I’m sorry. He’s not – “

“It’s fine.”

“He’s not you.”

Guy swallows. “Did you do this one, too?”

He looks confused. “No, I don’t – I don’t work in bronze. Why?”

“Because it’s a – it’s a helicopter crash.”

“… No. No it’s not.”

He pulls him to his feet, and Guy turns to look at the sculpture. It’s not a helicopter crash at all. It’s – it’s a generic bronze shape. Something like a wave.

“I thought – I thought – “ He breaths. Kyle reaches out and takes her hand.

“It wasn’t your fault. What happened to Hal, it wasn’t your fault.”

**1972**

He wakes with Kyle breathing against his cheek. It’s still dark. He kicks him under the covers.

“Kyle.”

“Mmm.”

“You need to move.”

“Ugggh.”

“Go quick, Kyle. You don’t want everyone finding out your big secret now, do you?”

That gets them both jolting upright, hearts hammering in their chest. Hal is standing at the end of the bed in his flight suit.

“You look cute together,” he drawls. “Though I got to say, Gardner, he’s too cute for you. Makes you look even uglier in comparison. I’d hate to break up the party.”

He can feel Kyle’s heartbeat through his skin. It’s practically shuddering its way out of his chest.

“Are you threatening us, Jordan?” says Guy, calmly. “Because you know that’s going to end up worse for you than it is for him.”

He smiles, slow and easy and charming – it’s probably the smile he does back home when he’s done a triple loop in the air and landed her safely. “Of course not, Guy. I’m just going to go out early on a helicopter raid to drop supplies. I just wanted to – “ his voice arches into something lewd – “see you off.”

**1976**

They walk through Central Park while Guy tries to stop his hands from shaking him. Winter is slowly thawing out.

“You know,” says Kyle. “I’m kind of glad this happened.”

“You’re glad I caused a scene at your first exhibition and you ended up punching me.”

“I mean, I’m glad you got to be the one who was a wreck for a change, and I got to be the strong one. In Vietnam, I was – I was just a kid, you know? You made me feel less scared.”

“You were fine,” he says, then “oh god, but you were so nervous out on patrol. I mean, considering you were a kid in the middle of _that,_ then, I don’t know, I guess you did good. But the singing, that was truly – something.”

Kyle’s laughing, the soft blush rising on his cheeks. “Oh man, oh man. _I wish I was an Oscar Meyer weiner,_ wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, and that Motown song, the one record that we had – _Nowhere to Run.”_

“Man, remember the time Hal talked those four nurses into coming over and we all went crazy dancing with them?”

“And then John married his.”

“Man,” says Kyle, his mouth curling fondly. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You know, I did love you.”

“And I loved you.”

“No, you and Hal – “

“Kid.”

“Guy.”

“Kid.”

He takes a quick look around and then drags him in for a kiss that is breathless and shuddering and reverent and demanding all at once. He holds him close and tries to find the words again, the words he once mouthed into his skin, into Hal’s skin, before he even understood what he was saying.

There’s the sound of laughter and they fall apart just as a group of girls turn the corner, their scarves fluttering behind them like the wings of exotic birds.

“Connor’s beautiful,” he says, low under his breath, and Kyle’s breath shudders.

“Yeah.”

He half-punches him on the arm and starts to turn to go. “I’ll see you around, kid. I expect a personal invite to your next exhibition, ‘k?”

“You could – we could catch dinner and – “

“All the places you like are probably too trendy for me,” he calls back, and he would add something else but he’s already in shouting distance and by the time he starts to string words together, Kyle has already raised a hand and turned to go.


End file.
